A challenge to find the lost primes

Can you find one of the ‘lost’ primes?

The biggest prime number ever discovered is 17 million decimal digits long. Its predecessor, discovered in 2008 was 12 million digits long. Those are huge numbers, but there is also a huge gap between them.

In order to be efficient, the algorithms that have been developed to discover large primes will often leave large areas of unexplored territory in the number-space behind them: the “lost primes”.

We’re challenging you to use cloud computing to find one of those lost primes, and help to increase mathematical knowledge.